Blockone Fined by SEC, What are the Implications for EOS?

Let’s talk about EOS’s parent company, Blockone, who spent US$24 million to reach a settlement with the SEC.

After reading relevant lawyer letters and overseas comments, we feel there may still be some doubts existing, for instance, should the EOS which had paid the fines still belong to “security”? What other cryptocurrencies also face the same “risks of being fined”? What’s the impact on the entire blockchain in the future?

In addition, based on this issue, the financing function of Ethereum is not because of the rise of some platform coins and IEO. So, who is exactly the “killer” hiding behind, please refer to our explanations as follows:

US$24 Million Fine

US$24 million sounds very exaggerated, but it will be overlooked when compared with the previous financing of US $4 billion, because US$24 million only accounts for 0.58%. How to understand it? We know that since the current annualized return of some Money Market Fund are 2%, such a large amount of fund management income will be higher than such a level. Therefore, it’s needless to say the penalty is heavy or not.

There’s another news on the same issue which said Sia had also reached a settlement with SEC with a fine of US$220,000. But how much did they get by financing in 2014-2015? Although Kik had also financed about US$100 million, it had to consider layoffs to save money to fight against the SEC. I have to admit that blockone’s lawyers are really very good at showing.

Does current EOS still belong to “security”?

We have issued an article about the category of cryptocurrencies and I wonder whether you still remember it or not. As for the category of public chain, we should say they have more attributes of functional tokens. So why were they fined this time?

We should understand it in this way: US SEC believes that the ERC-20 token is in accordance with the Howey test (they should be regarded as securities if the following conditions are met: (1) investment funds, (2) joint ventures, (3) expected profits through the efforts of others).

B1 sold ERC20 tokens from June 26, 2017 to June 1, 2018, which was regarded as a security under the Securities Act, but B1 did not submit a registration to SEC during this period.

It’s fined because the financing process was not compliant to regulations instead that EOS itself was a “security”. From this perspective, it can be said that the SEC didn’t believe Blockone commit any crime or frauds during the financing process.

Similarly, it can be basically assumed that EOS will no longer get involved in the disputes on whether it’s a “security” or not. Among thousands of cryptocurrencies which can completely circumvent such a dispute, they may still face huge uncertainties except for Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, even Ripple is still in suspense (Ripple Labs may face the fine of US$30 million, according to the news released on 2nd of this month).

According to the description above, we may understand why many new projects in the past two years didn’t choose erc20 tokes after private placement and they just waited to issue coins until the main network online. Just as a saying goes, those who eliminated you have nothing to do with you. We used to claim that it’s the IEO brought up by the Binance that replaced the financing function of the Ethereum. Now, it sounds too naïve because the real killer turns out to be the SEC. A big surprise?

A Warning to the Coin Holders of Other Projects

It should be noted that EOS is really a freak because it taken many measures to avoid legal risks during the financing when compared with other 99% projects, such as the disclaimer on official website which always brings infinite misunderstanding. The main network was initiated by a third party. Moreover, the sales are conducted by shielding the US IP. It’s for real, not just an oral description.

In the US regulations, such a kind of geographical shielding measures are not enough and the KYC shielding are also needed. If the trading can be conducted in the secondary market, nobody could stop Americans from buying coins unless relevant measures have been taken.

So, although many measures seem to be in line with regulations, they will launch attacks against you only if there are any loopholes. It’s just a matter of time.

We can have a look at these projects which have never issues ERC20 tokes without shielding the purchase of US users. They even called for marketing on Twitter every day. They were making the crazy temptation at the edge of being fined.

Future Impact on EOS Itself and the Entire Blockchain

For EOS itself, it’s really a significant positive news, which means another step forward in terms of compliance, especially for VOICE which is likely to be online soon. Once the doubts on compliance have been eliminated, American users will be better engaged so that it’s more probable to become a valuable application.

B1 has also claimed to hire senior legal consultants to ensure the legality and compliance of VOICE tokens, as well as to seek future compliance based on EOS network tokens.

For the entire blockchain industry, a sample has been set to provide guidance on how a blockchain project get along with or cooperate with the supervision of various countries, as well as the necessity of spending more on lawyers. After all, no matter how virtual it is, we can’t get away from the real world. The way of compliance is not as difficult as being expected because the real world is also very tolerant of the innovations in the direction of the blockchain.

Summary

Another conclusion from this issue is that the booming of ICO financing or similar mode is less likely to occur in the future. Many news in the coin market in the past years are still dominated by the other side of the Pacific Ocean and the issue of compliance will also become a main threshold.

The potential outbreak factors which can be seen now include the DAPP (decentralized application) and its DEFI (distributed finance).

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